Picture Us In The Light(101)
When the paved road ends and we’re back on the dirt and gravel the car jostles us around, and I lean my head against the backrest and close my eyes and try to unravel all the moments leading to this one, imagine what I could’ve done differently, what I could still do. Maybe if I tell her more about what it’s been like for my parents, or if I tell her the whole story. Or maybe—
“Do you guys need anything for your drive back?” Joy says as we pull back in sight of the portables. “There’s not much open right now in town, but we have some water bottles and Red Bulls and trail mix.”
I say yes just to prolong things. How is it that I came all the way here and I’ll leave with nothing? We follow her into the portable, where Byron (at least I think it’s Byron; they’re both white guys in their twenties with short hair) nods at us from where he’s sitting in front of one of the computers wearing heavy-duty headphones. Joy pulls down a box from one of the plastic shelves and starts to rummage through it.
While we’re standing there, a strange looks goes over Harry’s face. I follow his gaze to the wall, and there next to a whiteboard is the portrait of my mom, the one I drew. It’s an impossible feeling to see it here in this context. It stuns me in place. I must stare at it a good minute, the rest of the room fading out in the periphery.
“I was home visiting my parents and I thought I’d stop by your art showing. I read about it online,” Joy says quietly.
I jump; I didn’t even notice she’d come closer to me. “How did you even hear about it?”
“I was—” She glances back toward not-Byron. “I was looking you up. You really should be more careful about online privacy.”
“You were looking me up?”
“I was curious. I’m a scientist. I was curious about any biological ties.”
I was certain already, but hearing her say it is staggering nonetheless, too much and too big to absorb right away. I will replay that for the rest of my life.
“They would love to talk to you,” I say. “I’m pretty sure they’d give anything at all just to hear your voice, even just for a few seconds. Anything you want to know or anything you want to say to them—I could call them right now if you want.”
Byron/not-Byron are watching us with their arms crossed, and in the portable’s small space I feel how little room there is right now for me. We’ve worn out our welcome, I know that.
She starts to say something, then stops herself. I can see her struggling. But I understand that struggle for what it is—she’s not choosing between two different parts of herself, I don’t think. She made her choice. The struggle now is just that she’s a nice person and will feel bad if she hurts me, not because of who I am, but just because of who she is.
“I’m not open to talking to them,” she says. “I’m sorry to hear they aren’t doing well, and for your sake I hope things clear up soon.”
She’s gathered some water bottles and granola bars, a few cans of Red Bull, and she puts them in a bag now and hands it to me. I can sense her lightening, having nearly disposed of us. A part of my heart curls like a pencil shaving and peels off.
“Drive safely back,” she says. “I’m glad to know you’ve been doing well. Really. You have a lot of talent. Good luck with everything. It was nice to meet you both.”
The drive from San José to Modoc County feels striking and starkly beautiful on the way there, when you’re full of hope and promise and the future, when you feel like you’re the hero in your story. On the way back, though, when you’ve lost what you set out for, when you’re beginning to understand how you screwed everything up and now you’re left with nothing, it feels long and painful and impossible to begin.
I thought I’d have something to offer my parents.
I guess I still do, even though it’s none of what I wanted. I’ll tell them I’ll stay here with them, figure out some kind of job here. Maybe they’ll try to talk me out of it, but deep down I’m sure they know I can’t go to Providence. They could be detained and I’d have no way of knowing. I wouldn’t be able to visit or talk to them. And even if not, even if nothing happens, I can’t leave them here alone in their awful apartment to panic whenever footsteps go by. I can’t do that to them. They’ve lost too much already.
So that’s my offer. And I have this, too, small as it is: all the anger and resentment I felt toward them are gone. When Joy closed the door behind us those things drained completely away.
We’ve left the city limits when, with a suddenness that arcs through me like a knife, it all clicks into place. His experiment, losing the house, all of it: my dad risked everything because that experiment was all he had left of her, because the emptiness he must have felt (must feel still) would eclipse anything I’m currently feeling, and all he had to fill that ocean-sized hole was the hope of some tangible, atomic connection to her that no part of their history and none of his choices could sever.
And that was why my mom hated the experiment so much. Because it exhumed everything she’d tried so hard to bury.
The sun is starting to dip down as we drive back. You never really notice how much you miss the daylight until it’s slipping away. Driving with someone feels different at night—the dark locks you into the car and shrinks the world around you so all it is is you, and you feel how little you have left outside the car.